vegas nightclub owning?
i wanted to know where to find stories of how the owner and founders of some of the biggest nightclubs on the vegas strip started out. how much did they invest, and how did they do it. thats my dream is to be the best bartender and own my own club in on of vegases finest hotels. also if there is a book that would be great to know like buisness starting for dummies or whatever, please and thank you
Comments
You may be a little bit late to the party to start your own nightclub in Vegas. 8-10 years ago hotels were starting to experiment with nightclubs and taking a chance on young people starting new businesses. Nowadays they take competitive bids from the multi-million dollar corporations that grew out of those small businesses. The only new companies starting up nowadays are spin-offs started by people who have already been working in the industry for years and have well-known reputations and relationships.
Start-up costs for a major hotel nightclub in Vegas in the next 5-6 years will be $30-$40 million, and because competition is so steep now, no nightclub will last more than 6 months without a firmly established foundation of promotions and marketing BEFORE it opens.
If you realistically want to run a new hotel club in this era, you would have to work for one of the companies that already has the money and the relationships needed to get the deal done. Start as a bartender or promoter and work your way up with Light Group or Pure Group. Focus on the long-term and not on the weekly cash and you might have a chance of being the 1 in 100 nightclub hustlers that actually builds a real career in the industry.
But definitely don’t try to start your own nightclub business in Vegas at this point from scratch or you will crash and burn.
July 3rd, 2010 at 10:38 pm
There’s books on Nevada history, but I would think you need to be reading on general entrepreneurs regardless of location.
Being a bartender does NOT make you an owner. You would want to be a manager and move up from there. Bartender to manager is NOT a direct pipeline, though bartending well is a good way to get employment here.